Outlander: I Am Not Alone

 

"Sing me a song of a lass that is gone ..."

 

Hello everyone!

 

Ugh, we FINALLY made it.

 

Listen, I have nothing against Outlander. In fact, it's one of my absolute favourite shows, and the cast has wormed its way into my heart and lives there on a permanent basis.

 

But it's no secret that I haven't been a massive fan of season six.

 

In fact, this is a season I've loved the least of the lot, despite the fact that there's definitely been questionable choices made back in the day in previous ones.

 

The problem has to be in its relative shortness, which I know couldn't have been prevented given circumstances - however, coupled with that came what the writers and producers wanted the story to focus on, which didn't help progression any.

 

When you have books as massive as the Outlander Series, then you need to pick and choose actions and situations which will help you move forward. I'm not convinced that season six managed.

 

Let's have a quick look at the finale, I Am Not Alone.

 

Outlander: Sticks and Stones

 

"Everything that happens here is everyone's business."

 

Hello everyone!

 

So after a brief pause and a week in between that had nothing to do with time travel but - on this blog at least - everything to do with Regency, we now return to the United States pretty much almost on the verge of the Revolution.

 

And boy, as we all know, things are heating up.

 

I'm still side-eyeing this particular plot like it's no tomorrow, because to be perfectly honest with you, A Breath of Snow and Ashes has a whole lot more going on in it than just 'Who's the baby daddy?'.

 

But the producers and show runners made the executive decision to focus solely on this one plotline for the sake of perfect drama, I suppose.

 

As such, I really wonder just how they're going to push and spin the threads further by the time we see season seven come about. HOPEFULLY we get to cover some more actual history again and not just this made-up nonsense.

 

It's Outlander; there's more to it than what we got this year.

 

Outlander: The World Turned Upside Down

 

"This too shall pass."

 

Hello everyone!

 

Well, we got to that point.

 

The one readers have been dreading ever since the announcement that no one had the brains to suggest the Christie subplot should (and ostensibly COULD) have been removed from the storyline altogether.

 

This was problematic in the books already, and the books are thousand pages long behemoths.

 

A show that's boxed into eight episodes that can really only cover SO MUCH before it runs out of time should, in my opinion, focus rather on the bigger picture.

 

And this one had nothing whatsoever to add to the bigger picture.

 

Plus, I still don't even get it. Maybe someone can enlighten me a little bit? I'm genuinely not trolling, I really just don't understand.

 

Now that my little Ted Talk is out of the way, let's have a look at Outlander's latest episode, The World Turned Upside Down.

 

Outlander: Give Me Liberty

 

"The tide has turned."

 

Hello everyone!

 

This week on our favourite time-travelling show, we catch up with some familiar faces and start running neck-deep into the Revolution that's about to happen.

 

As a very helpful Claire points out: the dates that we have in our heads are for when the Declaration of Independence was signed, not for when the war actually began.

 

That stuff, the scary, shoot-people and stab the rest kind of deal?

 

That starts WAY before anything can ever be signed.

 

And it's that which worries anyone who has a modicum of knowledge when it comes to the future, among other things. But there's a lot to unpack for this episode, even though my personal favourites will be and always remain the guest stars.

 

Listen, Starz, can you just, ignore whatever prequel thing you're doing for Outlander and give us a Lord John spin-off instead?

 

Much obliged. But Give Me Liberty first.

 

Outlander: Hour of the Wolf

 

"Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone."

 

Hello everyone!

 

We're halfway through season six of Outlander after this week's episode, can you believe it?

 

It's really going by so fast with only eight installments slated for the season, though of course all of us can't wait for the extra long seventh that's coming our way (all of us are also sort of feeling that it MIGHT be the last, and that's why they're making it extra long).

 

In the meantime though, we're still slowly marching our way towards the inevitable.

 

History is as much a part of the Outlander books as the love story between Jamie and Claire, perhaps even more sometimes, and the closer we are to the end of the season, the closer we are to the inevitable Revolution.

 

But it hasn't arrived JUST yet, and so we can probably rest for a little while longer.

 

Maybe.

 

Without further ado, let's take a look at Hour of the Wolf.

 

Outlander: Allegiance

 

"Come what may." 

Hello everyone!

I'm actually on time this week, which is a massive shock to just about anyone really. Or should be.

But I finally seem to have found a rhythm so let's hope that everything will now run like clockwork and there'll be no switching up for Saturday posts anymore.

... famous last words.

Anyway, we return for the second week in a row to the world of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander, if you haven't figured it out yet from the title or the poster image here on the side.

And boy, is it an episode!

There's a lot of things going on at once on Fraser's Ridge, and they'll probably keep on adding on to it in the next six weeks while this short season lasts.

But without further ado, let's jump right into Allegiance, shall we?

Outlander: Echoes

 

"If you are to stay, then my word at Fraser's Ridge is law." 

Hello everyone!

Firstly, let me apologise for the fact that this post didn't go up on Tuesday as I'd originally planned. Unfortunately, life got in the way - as it often does - and I was SO exhausted over the weekend and on Monday that it just ... wasn't going to work out.

So in the end, I did what I promised to do at the start of 2022, took it easy, and decided to bump it to a Saturday post.

And here we are!

Of course, I'll hopefully be covering the rest of the season since it's only eight episodes (the horror!), but is anyone else getting the feeling we may be drawing towards the end here? I know a season seven has already been confirmed, and it looks as if they'll be covering ALL the books, but I don't know.

It feels like an ending, sort of.

Anyway, enough of my maudlin, time to head back to Fraser's Ridge and see our beloved people of Outlander!

Game of Thrones: The Winds of Winter

"Winter is here."

Hello everyone!

IT'S DONE, YO! 

Ahem.

Anyone who knows me or who has been reading along with these blogs knows that I'm pretty much all over the place when it comes to Game of Thrones, but this Sunday's tenth and final episode of the sixth season was SO worth all the annoyance and tears and aggravation that came before. Most notably in season five because a lot of the stuff in five seemed to be something we would never, ever understand, only to realize it was all a huge build-up for this hour and some minutes!

Oh yeah, it was a super-sized finale. Gotta love THOSE.

And I didn't actually get to it before a friend of mine told me I better strap in for the ride, because apparently it was explosive. Like, literally explosive.

I didn't believe her until I saw through the ep, but you know what they say: seeing is believing.

I am now a firm believer. Also, I declare for House Stark, but that's beside the point.

Game of Thrones: Battle of the Bastards

"You will die tomorrow."

Hello everyone!

So.

It happened.

Episode Nine.

I swear the number alone should come with a warning when it's Game of Thrones, because, looking back on previous seasons, the penultimate episode of each has ALWAYS been the one that made people remember just why it was that they initially began watching the show in the first place.

Season six, episode Nine, did not disappoint either.

Not only was it brilliant visually and condensed in terms of space and time, but it was also pretty much an epic smack-down which told us who will, in the end, probably prevail and stand over the charred and/or frozen corpses of their enemies.

Although, I will also freely admit that I made a very vital mistake in eating dinner prior to watching the episode.

Special shout-out to Maegan because, well, she told me not to, and I didn't listen.

Game of Thrones: No One

"A girl is not 'no one'."

Hello everyone!

Back yet again with another review for Game of Thrones. This week's episode was titled 'No One', and it was actually quite fitting as it moved most plotlines forward, pointed out no one is invisibl to death, dealt with Arya (thank the gods!) and even managed to make me not headdesk that much.

Okay, I lied about that. 

I headdesked through ALL of the episode. Mostly.

Then again, this is Game of Thrones, so I'm not sure why I'd even be surprised that it brings out such conflicting and rather ... er, irrationally strong emotions out of me. You'd figure after five full seasons and the sixth coming to a close, I'd be immune to the lot of it.

But, nope.

Every time I sit down to watch, it's a case of yet another scintillating monologue between me and my computer screen. Always intelligent, of course.

Game of Thrones: The Door + Blood of my Blood

"Hold the door!"

Hello everyone!

So after last week's internet disaster, I'm back, and as I promised, tonight's blog post is going to combine the recaps of both the fifth and the sixth episodes of Game of Thrones (season 6, of course, let's not get ahead of ourselves here). 

The reason for this being because I've promised to recap the entirety of the season as it rolled along, which means that I can't stop now, can I? I need to see this through.

Not that it's a hardship.

Every Monday night, regardless of the fact that there used to be a number of shows which aired Sunday and I could only watch them a day after (less now as most of them are on a summer break), I'd first watch the hour in Westeros just to ensure myself that all was right in the world.

I mean, honestly?

If you think you have it bad, all you have to do is watch one of those episodes; you'll be darn sure by the end of it that your life is a walk in the park compared to these guys.

Game of Thrones: Oathbreaker

"My watch is ended."

Hello everyone!

Back to Game of Thrones, of course, as it's Tuesday and therefore time for another episode recap! With so much stuff going on it's a wonder that I manage to keep my head on straight through the lot of it. 

What keeps on astounding me is how the producers are now finally moving forward with the plot and all the unanswered questions that the author still hasn't gotten to as he hasn't yet finished writing his books. It will, however, admittedly be weird when he does end up publishing the last two as the show will be over by then and they might pick a different kind of resolution even though they know the ending, or so it has been said.

Until then though, we're going to have to make do with HBO's version, and I can't say I'm arguing against it!

Some of the stuff I've been anxious to see ever since the show started, so this season is DEFINITELY bringing me up to speed with that - and not just me, but everyone else around who's an ardent Game of Thrones fan!

Game of Thrones: The Red Woman

"For the night is dark, and full of terrors."

Hello everyone!

Normally, I don't do these kinds of posts, or better still I do posts which cover the whole season of a television series since if I wanted to do recaps of each episode, I'd have to have more sets of hands, more time, and much more blog space. 

But.

In all honesty, the hype surounding Game of Thrones and its sixth season was such that I'd have to be blind not to notice it.

Not to mention, I was right along there with them!

This show is probably the most successul one HBO will ever make, and I'm not saying this lightly given there's a lot of potentially awesome material out there which could very well take the throne, but so far, Game of Thrones seems to be the only thing that's really burning all bridges and collapsing every single record out there.

And honestly, they own it.

GAME OF THRONES

IT'S PREMIERE NIGHT!

Break out the comfort drinks, grab your bestie, and strap yourselves in!

IT'S GO TIME!

*image not mine